The notoriously shallow, fairly bro-focused site College Humour has produced a viral video entitled ‘Sexually Enlightened R&B song’ featuring a black heterosexual couple, both stereotypically attractive, in which the man serenades the woman with a standard-composition 90’s R&B tune about having a fair and equal sexual encounter with her that evening. At face value, this content should not be at all humorous, but I found myself laughing out loud, not at the ideas being shared, but at the ridiculous thought that a mainstream cultural product would ever seriously espouse such blatantly feminist values from the mouth of a man.

I liked it and laughed despite the basing of the piece upon clearly heteronormative, liberal feminist views (not the radical queer intersectional feminist approach I try to take. As I commented to my friend, hard feminist porn producer Nikki Swarm, it’s important for the singer to clarify that although his woman is experienced, she is not a ho, because it would be going too far to — gasp — humanise sex workers! and they are getting married, so clearly she can’t be a ho! I disagree with versions of feminism where some women do not receive feminist protection, where those who have made ‘bad choices’ about themselves and their bodies, including sex work, casual sex and abortions are demonised, and the line between good and bad girls is tightly upheld. Instead, I believe that everyone has the agency to make their own choices under structural systems in which the options for oppressed people (in this case, make money from sex work, be in debt and unemployed, or work shit jobs and make peanuts for hard, stressful labour) are all problematic.

Nevertheless, despite all this, the feminist principles articulated in the song were still far enough from the androcentric social norm around heteroromantic, sexual and intimate relationships to be highly unusual, and worthy of attention. The ideas it introduces, such as sexual reciprocity (‘I’ll go down on you / You’ll go down on me) and a woman having a healthy human sexuality (In my opinion / your sexual liberation / is healthy and normal / and makes you human), as simple and pedestrian as they should be, are presented as alien to the misogynistic norm, so far-fetched and impossible as to be funny. Continue reading →

Tell your peoples.

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A collection of news items that have made us angry, made us sad, astounded us, and/or ignited our revolutionary fire lately [trigger warnings for sexual assault, murder and violence against women, reproductive and police injustice].

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In recent weeks, the online abuse of feminists has made headlines with the bomb, rape and murder threats received by figures such as historian Mary Beard, activist Caroline Criado-Perez, and several female journalists, including Time magazine’s Europe editor Catherine Mayer, Guardian columnist Hadley Freemam and Grace Dent from the Independent. In response, liberal white feminist Caitlin Moran has been campaigning for “all pleasant people”, as she calls them, to refrain from tweeting today, August 4, 2013, as an act of protest against this abuse.

We agree wholeheartedly with Zerlina’s stance that instead of telling women what they should do to prevent rape, we should instead be teaching men not to rape. In an interview on Fox News that attempted to bring together issues of sexual violence with those of gun control, Zerlina said the following:

“I don’t want anybody to be telling women anything. I don’t want women—I don’t want men to be telling me what to wear, how to act, not to drink. And I don’t, honestly, want you to tell me that I needed a gun in order to prevent my rape.”

The actions of these individuals show us that it is possible for us to effectively resist and challenge rape culture. We stand in solidarity with the Steubenville survivor and all victims and survivors of sexual violence everywhere. We especially remember Jyoti Singh Pandey, who died after a gang rape on a public bus in Delhi in December 2012, and the teenage girl in the Maldives scheduled to be publicly flogged (what century is this!?) for premarital sex (sign a petition against this here). We join with many in calling for an end to rape culture worldwide.